The Condemnation of 1277

Bishop of Paris, Etienne Tempier

I. The problem...all these Aristotelian ideas (and some New Age nonsense) inconsistent with faith and taught as if they're just the truth.

A. Excommunicated if you taught them or even listened to them without reporting it.

B. Kind of weird jumble. Rush job.

C. Some of Aquinas' ideas are in here...he's canonized in 1325 and the Bishop of Paris revokes the condemnation of his ideas.

II. Examples: What do they mean?  Where do they come from?   What's bad about them?

A. Aristotle and his Islamic followers: 13, 33, 85, 117.

B. Other interesting examples...presumably not Aristotelian in origin: 63, 92 (Stoicism), 136

III. Freedom: Compatibilism vs. Indeterminism.  Is the movement of the will towards some object (choice) inevitable?  Condemnation wants to say, "no" there are genuinely open options.

A. the stars: 154,156

B. irresistible desire: 158-160, 163.  This last really does sound like what Aquinas says.

C. punishment: 165 (determinists and compatibilists have a problem with retribution, since you couldn't really do otherwise).

IV. Foreknowledge and Future Contingents

A. the Problem

1. It's really important to say that God knows the future. (Sovereignty, Problem of Evil)

2. It's really important to say that human beings have genuine freedom. (Moral Responsibility, Free Will Defense)

3. But if future choices are really free, how can the be foreknown by God?  That is, if God knows today what I'm going to do tomorrow, then, come tomorrow, I cannot do otherwise than God foreknew that I would do.
 

B. Here's what we CAN'T say (#15).  God cannot know future contingents because...
 

1. There's nothing there to be known. Aristotle's idea was that propositions about the future don't have a truth value in the present.

2. Contingent things are singular and God, since He doesn't begin with sense knowledge, does not know singulars.

(N.B. 1 and 2 deny divine foreknowledge)

3. God's knowledge is the cause of the things foreknown.

--- Now, there is reason to say this, based on  traditional view of God as perfectly simple and pure actuality---

a. God's knowledge is causal.  God is perfectly simple and His knowledge is identical with His power.

b. God is pure actuality. No potential.  How can contingent things have an effect on God? How can we teach God something?

-- But if we say it, we are stuck with the conclusion that God is the ultimate source of "sin", whatever "sin" can mean on such an analysis --

4. Foreknowledge does not cause the future event, but for something to be foreknown its causes must be known. Determinism.

(N.B. 3 and 4 deny genuine freedom)

C. A workable solution --- Anselm of Canterbury 1033-1109 --- Perhaps unfamiliar to 13th century philosophers?

1. 4-dimensionalist understanding of time.  God knows the future because He is eternal, outside of time.  He "sees" all of time, (what is to us) past, present, and future, as immediately "present."  He knows (from my perspective) today what I will do tomorrow because He sees me doing it.  Since it's my choice that causes God's knowledge.  A choice is not determined and originates with me, it is a libertarian free choice, even though God knows it's going to be made "before" (from my perspective) I make it.

2. Note that this also solves the Immutable Creator causing and interacting with a changing universe. (Maimonides)

Duns Scotus 1265-1308
 

I.  The original dunce.  Franciscan, critical of Aquinas.  Usually seen as a continuator of the Augustinian tradition, though with plenty of Aristotelian influence and some major differences, e.g. no divine illumination.  Knowledge starts with the senses.  All we have time for are: The proof for God, univocity of language about God, universals, and voluntarism.
 

II. Can we conceive of God Himself.  Yes...univocally!
 

A. Are our terms only negative?  Good = not bad. (603)

1.  Then they would apply equally to "nothing" as to God.  We would end up describing "nothing."

2. Must be some positive content.  Maimonides seemed to want to say that we could say that God existed, we just couldn't say what He is.  Scotus goes, unless you have some concept of what it is you can't say that it is.
 

B. We do have terms that we can use positively and univocally of God, as the history of philosophy shows. (604) E. g. being.

1. Many philosophers have hypothesized a "first principle"... the absolute from which all else comes into being....and were certain that it had being. (Being certain means they were right.)  E.g. Heraclitus and FIRE.  But they wrongly attributed infinity, uncreatedness, and being first to this being, when in fact their proposed first principle was finite, created, and not first.

2.  What it shows is that we have a concept of being, more general than our concepts of finite or infinite being, and capable of applying to both.
 

C. Wouldn't analogy do the job?  dog (living) > God (Living) The life in the dog is related to, but still different from the Life in God. No.  Either I can move beyond creatures to say something accurate about God, or I can't.

1.  I get my concepts from sense data from creatures (agrees with Aquinas there).  I understand "living" from observing creatures.

2.  If all I can understand is "life" as it appears in creatures, then I cannot move beyond that.  If to me "life" means the way creatures live, then I shouldn't apply it to God.  I can't move beyond creatures.

D. How do I get the concepts I use for God?

1. It is true that they come from creatures.  I get my concept of e.g. wisdom from observing wise people.

2. But wisdom itself is not necessarily imperfect.  On the most general level wisdom could be perfect or imperfect, finite or infinite.  We can get the general concept (transcending these further divisions) from the creature and recognize that in creatures it's limited and in God it's unlimited.  But on that most general level we are using the term univocally.

III. The proof for God (H 608) (We can use a causal argument, but it's not absolutely certain because it starts from a premise which is contingent...something exists which is caused...we want to prove God without that.)
 

A. Step 1.  First need to prove that a being which exists per se CAN exist.  I.e. it is POSSIBLE for there to be a "first causally effective being".

1. Some being C can be caused.  (Just saying it's possible, not that it is the case.  But that means that this premise is a necessary truth.  We do not see that it is true by observation of contingent things, but merely by considering the concept of being.  So the conclusion of the argument is going to be a necessary truth about what is POSSIBLE, not what is actual. )

2. If C exists, C must be caused by something other being D. (Can't be caused by nothing, or by itself...so only other option.)

3. D is either caused or not.

4. If it's caused then it must be caused by something else.

5. Can't go to infinity in caused causes.

6. Therefore a first causally effective being, a being which exists per se CAN exist.  Again, he's just saying that it's possible.
 

B. Step 2.
 

MODUS TOLLENS (A>B)>(-B>-A)

1. A
2. -B>-A
therefore B.

Let X =A being which exists per se

1. X can exist (It is certainly possible that such a being exists. That's what step 1 showed.)

2. --(X does in fact exist) > --(X can exist)
(It can't bring itself into being and it can't be brought into being by something else.)

3. Q.E.D. X does in fact exist (Modus tollens, negating the consequent)
 

IV. Universals (Reputation for extreme realism) Concern is "specific natures" e.g. horseness

A. "Horseness" is just "horseness".  Neither one nor many.  There is a sufficiently general nature that transcends its various modes of existence, e.g. in the various horses, in the human mind...

B. How is "horseness" in the horses?  (Aquinas would have said each horse has its own nature, i.e. horseness  individuated by matter.)

1. It is one in all the different horses...one with less than numerical unity. ( Numerical unity means to be one discretely existing thing.  It's not that.  Just as the color of the desk and the desk are diverse, but with less than numerical diversity.) It's the sort of one that a bunch of different individuals can have. So if there are only 10 horses, but there is also the horseness in the horses, there are not eleven objects, there are the ten horses. If there's only one dodo, there aren't two objects, the dodo and the dodoness.

Here's how...

2. Outside of the intellect the specific nature possess both commonness and singularity.

3. Commonness belongs to it of itself. (As a nature it is what is common to all the members of the species.) Commonness is primary.  More fundamental.

4. To become singular it must have something added on.

a. not matter...formless matter is itself indistinct and indeterminate so it could not serve to make horseness into this horse.

b. Haecceitas
 

V.  Freedom

A. Definition (Human and divine)

1. There is no other cause of the will's choice than the will itself.

2.  You could do other than you did.

3.  There are real contingencies.
 

B. God's Freedom

1. Augustine (for basis of comparison): God is perfect goodness. He creates out of love.  He "must" create, and He "must" create the best possible world...the principle of plenitude.  God's will flows from His intellect in that He knows the best and creates it.

2. Scotus says, no.  He seems to hold that if God created "necessarily" then everything would happen necessarily...a conclusion some of the Moslems seemed to accept.

a. God could have made a different world or no world at all.

b. Created being are truly contingent.  They really might not have existed.

c. Not to say that creation is irrational.  God's intellect plays a central role -- it presents His will with the various possibilities and the will chooses.  No answer to the question, "Why did God make things this way?"

3. Morality.  Is Scotus a voluntarist.  (X is right because God commands it.  Things could have been otherwise.  God could have commanded --X.)

a. Why say it?  If God is absolutely supreme there must be no constraints on His will.  His will is at the very top.
 

b. Some moral laws are necessary and unalterable...those dealing directly with our response to the necessary being.  First two commandments; no other gods, and don't take the Lord's name in vain.

c. The rest aren't really necessary.  God could set them aside.  (I take it he's saying more than just that there might be the hard case where moral rules conflict and you can disobey one to conform to a more important one.  Any normal person would say that.)

1. His question (p.644) Situations exactly the same, the only difference being that God permits one and forbids the other.

2. Answers.  a. God has done it, e.g. with Abraham and Isaac.  b. If it were simply a necessary truth that "killing the innocent is evil" then God would know it, and would have to will it.  I.e. His will would be constrained by something other than itself.
 

Two big problems: 1) Seems to make moral order arbitrary. 2) The believer wants to say that "God is good" and mean something by it.  But if (almost)any behavior could be "good" , e.g. sadism, cruelty..., then the term ceases to have positive content.  We don't mean anything when we say, "God is good" beyond, "God is like what God commands".
 

Ockham 1280-1349 (Black Death)

I. Ockham's razor or the principle of parsimony

II. (Logic) Individuals, freedom, divine omnipotence.  You could call him the first of the great British Empiricists.  Fideism.  Scepticism about the power of human reason. He himself was certainly a believer.  In fact he was a Franciscan...but hard not to see his work as destructive of the great medieval synthesis of faith and reason.

III. Nominalism (conceptualism)

A. There are no universals outside of words and concepts.  To be is to be an individual.

B. If the universal, eg. dogness, actually existed it would have to be one thing.  (None of this "less than numerical unity" business!)(H p.663)

1. one thing can't be "in" many things.
2. this would deny creation ex nihilo
3. an individual can be annihilated without other members of the species being affected.
 

C. Comparisons

1. Obviously denying Scotist realism.

2. Denying Aquinas' view, too.

a. A: no universal in the creature, form in creature is individuated through matter, form only be universal when it is abstracted by the mind...none of the this sounds all that realist, but...

b. A: There is a unified nature in the thing, and (although we don't need to discuss this in our explanation of universals, it is the case that) the form in the thing reflects a unified Form, and Idea in the Mind of God, a Divine Exemplar. ( Even Abelard, an earlier conceptualist, believed in divine exemplars!)

3. Ockham denies that there are divine exemplars!  No Divine Idea of Man or horse or whatever.  All of this sort of thing is an unfortunate carry over from pagan platonism and we ought to get rid of it.  God has ideas, of course.  They're of individuals.  That's all there is!

D. So why do we have these universal terms and concepts?  Note that for Ockham the question is not "How does the nature become individuated?", but "Why are the individuals given a common name?" Opposite of Scotus. p. 670.

1. They aren't just arbitrary

2. We recognize similarities between individuals.  Plato and Socrates are both animals and they're both rational, so we give them the name "human."

3. No "human nature" that we all share, which is common to us and becomes individualized somehow.

4. All things are singular individuals which we can group together according to their similarities and name.  The name is a shorthand for "a thing with these properties."

5. This is a natural process...otherwise we seem to be saying it is arbitrary or a matter of convenience or some such thing, in which case we completely undermine the objectivity of scientific claims.

IV. Empiricism and causation

A. Nominalism leads to (radical) empiricism.  The only way to know an individual is through contact with it.  You can't argue from its having a certain nature to its having to behave in a certain way.

B. Causation (Algazali/Hume)

1. You can't figure out from the nature of a thing what effects it must produce or what causes it requires.

2. You can only learn about causes and effects from actually observing individuals in action.

3.  And even still you can't have definitive proof about causes in this world. (W p.241)
 
 

V. Can't prove God (very reminiscent of Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion)
Existence of God is not self-evident (Augustinian approach), nor can you prove God from creatures (Aristotelian approach).

A. We know causal connections by observing them.  You never observed the making of even one world.

B. Can't argue (eg. Aquinas' second way) that there must be a first efficient cause.  Maybe the whole cause of you is your parents, their parents etc.
 
 

C. Maybe a proof for a first "conserver".  Contingent things need something to keep them in being right now.  Can't be an infinite series because a present infinity is impossible...but this doesn't show that this ultimate conserver is God because we don't know that there can only be one.  There's at least one, but there could be loads...so not God...maybe there are other worlds with other conserving beings.
 
 

VI. Freedom and morality

A. Man is radically free.  he can make genuine choices.

B. Our only obligation, source of all moral law, is just to obey God.  (Can't adopt natural law ethics)

C. God is radically free.

1. Could He have willed other than He willed?  Yes.

2. Could the moral order be other than it is?  Yes. Voluntarism.  (There is a broad and deep problem with voluntarism.  We derive our words and concepts from the world.  Our term "good" comes from our observance of the world.  But if anything could be good, then the term loses all meaning.  "God is good," becomes meaningless.  What are we worshiping?)

3. He really means this.  Not only could God decide that rape and pillage and murder are fine.  He could command that we should hate Him...and if He commanded it, that's what we should do!
 

VII. The destructor...

Basic medieval premises which drive the synthesis between faith and reason, Greek philosophy and biblical revelation...

Reason can really tell us something.  The universe is intelligible.  (Not completely, of course, but...)

Cosmos is a an ordered and beautiful and valuable system.

The individual has a comprehensible form or structure through which it fits into the whole.

Human nature and place for human beings.

Prove God and His nature.

Ockham: No.  You can't prove God.  Everything is arbitrary.

Of course it's not like the "traditional" view suddenly blinked out.  It didn't at all.  It can look like Ockham "put an end to" the middle ages because he is the forerunner of philosophers whom twentieth century Anglophone philosophers have seen as the good guys of modern philosophy.

The Twentieth Century: empiricism, scepticism. (Positivism) You can't talk meaningfully about God, souls, morality.  Contempt for medieval philosophy.  General texts.  Universities sans medieval.  The times they are a-changin'.  20th century positivism is dead.  People are rethinking the modern project as it has been defined since Descartes.  Free for all...traditional approach a contender.  You are making the history of philosophy.  Be careful!
 
 

Note: I will feel free to ask you to explain and develop these points, and I may ask for comparisons.
 
 
 
 

The Condemnation of 1277

       -Question #15.  God's knowledge of future contingents.  Why does the believer want to say that God does indeed know future contingents?  Why does it seem that if God knows that you will do x tomorrow, your doing x is necessary, not contingent.  How does Anselm solve the problem?      What are the four things you can't say, according to the Condemnation of 1277?  Explain what the point of each is and why it is unacceptable.

    - Proposed possible "Anselmian" solution to dilemma of freedom and foreknowledge: Four-dimensionalism and how God knows what you will choose         tomorrow.

Duns Scotus

How does Scotus show that at least some of our language must apply to God univocally? (Critique of pure negation, and analogy). How do we get our concepts of God?

Explain Scotus' necessary demonstration of God's existence. (Give the two-step proof.  Explain each premise. Explain the form of the proof...modus tollens.)

Extreme realism.  How is horseness in the horses?  How does it become individuated? (Specific nature is both common and singular etc.)

According to Scotus, could God will other than He does?  What is the relationship between the divine will and intellect in the act of creation?

Could God permit tomorrow what He prohibits today (i.e. Can God change the laws of morality)?  Why does Scotus want to say this? What two exceptions does he make to the claim that God can change the moral order.  What are a couple of possible problems with saying this?
 

Ockham

Explain Ockham's view of universals (including his critique of realism, 3 arguments).  Why do we call cats, cats?  What is his view of human and divine knowledge with respect to universals?  Why does nominalism seem to lead to skepticism?  How does Ockham try to avoid extreme skepticism?

Explain Ockham's critique of the notion of necessary causal relations.

According to Ockham, why can't you prove the existence of God?  What can you prove in this connection?

Explain Ockham's voluntarism. (Be sure to note the difference between Scotus and Ockham).